A group of ATS
scholars presented a symposium on the Trinity on the weekend of June 20-24,
2019, organized jointly with Italian Adventist University in Florence,
Italy.

Ten speakers
brought their papers to present, while two papers were read for individuals who
could not attend. ATS scholars at the event included Jiří Moskala, Teresa
Reeve, Matthew Tinkham, Christopher Chadwick, Greg Howell, Denis Kaiser, and
ATS president John Reeve. Other speakers were sponsored by Biblical Research
Institute, the White Estate, and Andrews University Theological Seminary.

On Thursday,
Moskala presented on the Trinity from the Old Testament perspective and the
Holy Spirit in the Old Testament. Reeve brought historical context with a paper
on the Trinity in the early Christian church. To fill in the crucial time
period of the early Adventist church, Kaiser spoke on the Trinity in Adventist
writings from 1850 to 1920, and Howell presented the history of Adventist
anti-trinitarianism from 1870 to 1950. Friday brought a range of papers on the
biblical and theological studies of the Trinity.

Reeve’s Sabbath
sermon was titled “What Was God Doing for All That Time Before He Started
Creating?” “My main point was that God was a Trinity, not a lonely soul,” Reeve
said. “He was already a loving community. . . . What kind of a kingdom are we
joining as we sign up for eternity with God? We’re signing up for a loving
community, not a hierarchical empire ruled by a sole dictator.”

More than 40
individuals attended the symposium. The program included field trips to San
Gimingnano, a small, walled medieval hill town that is a UNESCO world heritage
site, and Villa La Petraia, one of the Medici villas in Castello, Florence.